The SSD Anthology: Understanding SSDs and New Drives from OCZ
by Anand Lal Shimpi on March 18, 2009 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Storage
The Blind SSD
Modern OSes talk to hard drives using logical block addressing. While hard drives are rotational media, logical block addressing organizes sectors on a hard drive linearly. When you go to save a file, Windows simply issues a write command for your file at a specific logical block address, say LBA 15 for example.
Your OS knows what LBAs are available and which ones are occupied. When you delete a file, the LBAs that point to that file on your hard disk are listed as available. The data you’ve deleted hasn’t actually been removed and it doesn’t get wiped until those sectors on the drive are actually overwritten.
Believe it or not, SSDs actually work the same way.
The flash translation layer in a SSD controller maps LBAs to pages on the drive. The table below explains what happens to the data on the SSD depending on the action in the OS:
| Action in the OS | Reaction on a HDD | Reaction on an SSD |
| File Create | Write to a Sector | Write to a Page |
| File Overwrite | Write new data to the same Sector | Write to a Different Page if possible, else Erase Block and Write to the Same Page |
| File Delete | Nothing | Nothing |
When you delete a file in your OS, there is no reaction from either a hard drive or SSD. It isn’t until you overwrite the sector (on a hard drive) or page (on a SSD) that you actually lose the data. File recovery programs use this property to their advantage and that’s how they help you recover deleted files.
The key distinction between HDDs and SSDs however is what happens when you overwrite a file. While a HDD can simply write the new data to the same sector, a SSD will allocate a new (or previously used) page for the overwritten data. The page that contains the now invalid data will simply be marked as invalid and at some point it’ll get erased.
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blackburried - Wednesday, March 25, 2009 - link
It's referred to as "discard" in the kernel functions.It works very well w/ SSD's that support TRIM, like fusion-io's drives.
Iger - Wednesday, March 25, 2009 - link
This is the best review I've read in a very long time.Thank you very much!
BailoutBenny - Tuesday, March 24, 2009 - link
Great in depth article on flash based SSDs. I'm waiting for PRAM though.orclordrh - Tuesday, March 24, 2009 - link
Very illuminating article, very well written and researched. It made me glad that I didn't pull the trigger on an SSD for my I7 machine and regret not buying OCZ memory! I'm interested in adding an SSD as the scratch disk for Photoshop CS4 to use. I don't really launch applications very often, say once a week on the weekly reboot and keep 6-8 apps open at all times. I have 12GB of memory for that. The benchmarks were very interesting, but what sort of activity does Photoshop scratch usage create? Large files or random writes? What type of SSD would be most cost effective here?An SSD does sound better than a SSD!
semo - Wednesday, March 25, 2009 - link
wait for ddr3 to enter the mainstream and buy loads of memory.use a ramdisk for your adobe scratch area. much faster than ssd and no wear to worry about (not that you would worry that much with modern ssds anyway).
http://www.ghacks.net/2007/12/14/use-a-ramdisk-to-...">http://www.ghacks.net/2007/12/14/use-a-ramdisk-to-...
there is also a paid for and more feature rich ramdisk out there. can't remember the name
strikeback03 - Wednesday, March 25, 2009 - link
I'll have to check when I get home, but I believe the recommended size for the scratch disk is upwards of 10GB. So would need a motherboard that supports a LOT of RAM to give enough to main memory plus a scratch disk.strikeback03 - Wednesday, March 25, 2009 - link
I was wondering the same thing. I'd guess it would be a lot of writing/erasing, so an SSD might not be the best from a longevity standpoint, but if your system is hitting the scratch disk often then the speed might make it worthwhile.mikepers - Tuesday, March 24, 2009 - link
Anand,I wanted to compliment you on what I think was an excellent article. This is the type of thing I really have always liked from Anandtech. The detailed background, the technical reasons for the issues and then a thorough review of the current state of things.
I just finished upgrading my desktop. The only remaining item I wanted to replace was the hard disk. I had been thinking about getting a Velociraptor but instead I just ordered a 60GB Vertex from Newegg.
Thanks again for all the work.
Mike P.
ameatypie - Monday, March 23, 2009 - link
That sure was a lot to take in! Fantastic article though, it has really opened my eyes to the possibilities that Solid State Drives provide. Probably wont be buying one in the immediate future given the so-called depression and such things, but i will certainly keep up with SSD progress.Thanks again for your fantastic articles - im sure im not the only one who really appreciates them :)
coopchennick - Monday, March 23, 2009 - link
Hey Anand, I just finished reading through this whole article and I'm very impressed with the thoroughness and how informative it was.You just acquired a new regular reader.